Catriona turned to face the corridor.
Across the hall, through the open doorway, she could hear Anthony's voice. Low, unhurried, the particular tone of a man going through the ordinary business of the afternoon.
"The eastern pasture boundary, has MacNeil responded?"
"Nae yet, me Laird." Fergus. "I'll send again tomorrow."
"Do that. And the roof repairs on the stable, are they finished or are they finished on paper?"
A pause. "On paper, me Laird. Largely."
"Then tell Duncan he has until Friday or I'll finish them meself and send him the bill."
"Aye."
"That's all."
Footsteps. Fergus moving away down the corridor. A pause.
Then the scrape of a chair, the small sounds of a man settling back to work. Completely ordinary. Not the voice orthe movements of a man who had done anything unusual that afternoon.
She looked at the herbs.
Freshly pulled. Still got soil at the base.
She looked toward the doorway. At the ordinary corridor, the ordinary afternoon light, the ordinary sound of him turning a page on whatever he was reading.
Nay,it cannae be.
She picked up the bundle. Set it down. Picked it up again. The stems were tied with plain cord, the same cord she'd seen on the edge of his desk two days ago when she'd walked past and he'd been working on correspondence.
She set it down for the last time and left it there.
She opened her satchel. Took out the mortar. Began to work, hands steady, eyes on what was in front of her.
She was a practical woman. She dealt in evidence, in what was measurable and real.
The herbs were real. The soil on the stems was real. And across the hall was a man who had not looked at her once since she'd walked back into this room, which was, in her experience,exactly what a person did when they were trying not to be caught doing something kind.
She ground the root without looking up.
By the time she was done preparing all the herbs, it was already late afternoon. She went back to James's bedside to check how he was doing.
He was awake.
Sitting up against his pillows, blankets pushed back to his waist the way children pushed blankets when they'd decided they were done being ill regardless of what their body thought.
He was small. Smaller than she'd expected for six, fine-boned in the way that chronic illness made children fine-boned, the kind of slight that spoke of energy spent on breathing rather than growing.
Dark hair, Anthony's coloring, a little damp still at the temples. But his eyes were open and sharp and entirely his own.
Fox was on the bed with him. That was new. He had his chin resting on James's knee and his eyes half-open.
Catriona stopped in the doorway.
She'd been in the herb room for most of the afternoon. Clearly, things had progressed in her absence.
"When did that happen?" she asked.
